


Against the Dying of the Light

by forensicleaf



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Avengers: Endgame Speculation, Avengers: Endgame spoilers, So much angst, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony is a sad dad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-13
Updated: 2018-12-13
Packaged: 2019-09-17 19:53:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16980783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forensicleaf/pseuds/forensicleaf
Summary: Tony hated space.Ever since he’d flown through a wormhole shouldering a nuclear warhead and the grim certainty he was going to die, he’d been haunted by visions of infinite stars in an endless inky black.So this? Yeah. Pretty much his worst nightmare.





	Against the Dying of the Light

**Author's Note:**

> WARNING: THIS STORY CONTAINS A THROWAWAY LINE REGARDING CONTEMPLATION OF SUICIDE. I DIDN'T TAG FOR IT AS IT IS JUST ONE LINE BUT PLEASE BE AWARE AND DON'T READ IF THIS WILL AFFECT YOU. KEEP YOURSELVES SAVE, LOVELIES.

 

Tony hated space.

Ever since he’d flown through a wormhole shouldering a nuclear warhead and the grim certainty he was going to die, he’d been haunted by visions of infinite stars in an endless inky black.

So this? Yeah. Pretty much his worst nightmare.

Their fuel had been depleted a week and a half ago; food and water, four days. They’d stretched the rations for as long as they could, consuming the bare minimum they needed to keep functioning, but the universe was a barren place – fifty percent more so, now - and with no opportunity to resupply, eventually they had run out.

Tony had thought he’d known what hunger was, thought he’d experienced the worst of it ten years ago in a cave in Afghanistan. He thought he’d known what thirst was, too, stumbling through the sand with the unforgiving desert sun beating down on his back. He’d never really known at all.

Before, when he’d thought the worst it could get was the gnawing pain in his stomach and the aching dryness in his throat – before even that passed and it took all he had just to keep himself upright – he’d tried to distract himself. Keep his hands busy.

“What are you doing?” the blue girl had asked, finding him elbow deep in the ships life support systems, wires and an assortment of tools he’d managed to pull together strewn around the floor of the cockpit. Some days she would appear; some days she wouldn’t. Some days she would speak to him; some days she wouldn’t. That suited Tony just fine.

“Prolonging our demise,” he’d answered around the screwdriver between his teeth. He dropped the tool into his hand, twisted a screw. “You can survive on seventy percent O² output, right?”

They might go blind, but at least they wouldn’t suffocate for an extra day or two.

“I can survive on thirty,” she had said quietly, voice devoid of her usual brashness. “One of Thanos’ many… improvements.”

Tony had looked at her then. Really looked at her. The endless plates of metal littering her body glowed as blue as her skin under the dim emergency lights of the Benatar, and her eyes were as black as the sky outside, but beneath the sheer alienness of it all was an emotion as human as he was.

Grief.  

“I’m sorry about your sister,” he’d felt compelled to tell her, because he hadn’t said it before. Not when she’d hauled him up from the dusty earth of Titan and onto this godforsaken rust bucket; not when she’d forced him to drink that nasty purple goop that had helped heal the wound in his chest; not when she’d set a course for _Terra,_ because, “where the hell else are we gonna go?”; and not when they’d sat together, eating what was probably the last pitiful meal either of them ever would.

At his words she had taken a deep, controlled breath. Blown it out slowly. Then she had turned her eyes to his and spoken five of her own that he had felt resonating within him ever since.

“I’m sorry about your son.”

After that she had gone, disappearing back into the depths of the ship and leaving him alone with a half-assembled circuit board and a hole in his chest that no number of nanites could ever plug.  

_My son._

Tony had swallowed hard against his dry, aching throat, suddenly aching so much more than before.

_He’s not my-_

_He wasn’t-_

He had sat there for a moment, staring blankly at his upturned palms, then he’d cleared his throat, finished tinkering with the CO² scrubbers, and gone to find something else to occupy his mind.

That had been two days ago.

Now, with only a few hours left before their oxygen ran out completely, dizzy and weak, and with no energy to do anything other than sit, all Tony had left was his thoughts.

He’d found an old, battered helmet in the ship’s armoury – like the one Star Lord had been wearing. It hadn’t taken much time playing around with it for him to get it recording. And so began what would ultimately be his last project.

_Hey Ms Potts_

It wasn’t fair to her. He knew it wasn’t. All she had wanted was for him to not be on that stupid flying donut. For him to come home. He had promised her a husband and all she was going to get was this shitty goodbye. No, it wasn’t fair at all.

_Part of the journey is the end_

And he was under no illusion. It was an end. For all his sarcasm and gallows humour, he now had to face the harsh reality: no one was coming. Not in time for him, anyway.

_When I drift off, I will dream about you_

Hypoxia wasn’t the worst way to go, so he’d heard. Feeling confused and tired until you fell asleep and didn’t wake up didn’t sound that bad. Especially if the last thing in his mind was Pepper’s beautiful face.

_It’s always you_

When he ended the recording, the blue girl was there, hovering in the archway to the cockpit. Maybe before, Tony would have made some crack about her voyeuristic tendencies, but now, he was just too tired to care.

His vision had started blurring from the low oxygen about six hours ago, so he couldn’t really read her expression as he moved the helmet, signalling for her to sit. She folded herself cross-legged into the small space beside him anyway, so she couldn’t have been too against the suggestion.

They sat there quietly for a while before she finally spoke.

“I am unfamiliar,” she said in that strange synthetic voice of hers, “with Terran burial rituals.”

Tony blinked. “What?” Then, “Oh.”

Right. Thirty percent. He’d be gone long before she would be.

“Doesn’t matter,” he said. And to him, it didn’t. Jettisoned into space like Squidward; entombed in the Benatar until it drifted into some wandering traveller’s path, what difference would it make? He’d be dead.

She stirred beside him, the clicking and whirring of the gears in her body loud in the quiet space.

“You fought Thanos bravely. You should be laid to rest with honour.”

He should have been laid to rest on Titan, should have been allowed to tap out after Thanos shoved that giant blade straight through him, instead of being spared at the cost of half the universe. At the cost of…

( _I’m sorry about your son_ )

And for what? What was the point? For it to end here anyway - a quiet whimper lost to the vastness of space? It wasn’t worth it.

“Just don’t eat me, Murder Smurf, and we’re good,” Tony said, letting his head fall back against the wall. He fought the urge to close his eyes.

For a beat, she was quiet, and he wondered briefly if she was actually considering it. Then she scoffed.

“I’d rather starve.”

He thought she’d leave, then, but she didn’t – instead choosing to rest back against the gentle curve of the interior. Her gaze was focused straight ahead, on the steady stream of stars that swept past the glass dome of the cockpit. Another day of companionable silence it was, then.

 But again, he was wrong.

“Nebula,” the blue woman said into the quiet.

Tony turned his face towards her, a question in his eyes.

“My name,” she elaborated, and he nodded.

“Tony.”

She picked up the helmet, cradling it between her hands like it was something precious. He supposed it was; his message in a bottle, adrift in an impossibly large ocean.

“You are lucky,” she said wistfully. “To have people to mourn for you.”

“You don’t…” he started, before trailing off. _You don’t,_ what? _You don’t have anyone? You don’t have any family?_ How did you ask that.

Nebula shook her head. “There was only Gamora. You’ll find few in the galaxy who would weep for a daughter of Thanos.” She paused, then barked a bitter laugh. “Fewer now, I suppose.”

He didn’t know what to say to that. _Sorry your dad-not-dad is a genocidal asshole_ didn’t seem to cut it. _Sorry he murdered the only person you loved_ even less so.

Nebula placed the helmet carefully back on the ground. When she next spoke, her words were laced with venom.

“My biggest regret is that I couldn’t be the one to end him.”

 _You and me both, sis_ , he almost said, although that wasn’t exactly the truth. Not killing the giant purple bastard ranked pretty high, sure, but…regrets, he had a lot. Too many to choose from, really. Where did he start? With the countless years he spent creating weapons and not sparing a thought for how they were used? With Yinsen? With Rhodey, falling, and him being too slow to catch him?

With Pepper, and the white dress that he’d never see her in?

( _I’m sorry about your son_ )

With holding a dying child and not speaking a word of comfort?

He cleared his throat.

“I was going to marry her,” he said, gesturing to the helmet when Nebula cocked her head. “Pepper. God, I don’t’ even know if she’s…”

He broke off, stopping that train of thought before he could consider it too closely. Because if Pepper hadn’t made it, he’d save himself the torture of a drawn-out death and throw himself out of the fucking airlock right now.

She made it. She had to have.

“Will she avenge you?” Nebula asked, and had Tony had the energy, he might have laughed at her choice of words. Instead, he smiled wryly, thinking of Pepper and how she was when she put her mind to something.

“If she does, Thanos isn’t going to know what hit him.”

She nodded. “And your son?”

He felt his face fall. Felt that hole reopening in his chest, spearing him through.

“He wasn’t my son,” he said, tightly. It was the truth, and yet the words felt like blades sliding in his throat. He suddenly wished he’d never spoken at all.

Nebula sighed. Climbed to her feet.

“Gamora wasn’t my sister,” she said, looking down at him. “But that’s what she became.”

Tony spent a long time looking out to the stars, after that. 

 

* * *

 

 He was jolted awake to an alarm blaring through the ship.

Disoriented and sluggish and unaware he’d even fallen asleep, it took him a second to realise what was going on.

Then, _fuck._

Oxygen warning. Had to be.

He was mildly distraught to realise he’d spent what were the last few hours of his life unconscious – the phrase _sleep when you’re dead_ came to mind – but it was pushed back in favour of the more pressing matter which was _turning that godawful noise off._

He hauled himself up, doing his best to ignore the wave of dizziness that doing so brought, and stumbled forwards on shaking legs to the control panel. There was a light flashing there, the blinking orange strobing in his blurred vision, and he paused, one hand gripping the dashboard hard in an effort to keep himself from collapsing, and one hovering uselessly over the panel. He didn’t know what to press. He couldn’t fucking _see_ what to press.

Then Nebula was there, slamming her hand down on the controls with a growl and plunging the ship once more into the quiet they had both become accustomed to. The only sound was the in and out of Tony’s breathing - harsh from exertion, or the already noticeably thinner air, or probably both.

He swayed, and Nebula gripped his arm to steady him. She pulled him away from the console, surprisingly gentle as she helped him down into the pilot’s seat.

He unstuck his tongue from the roof of his mouth, and his voice when he spoke was rough. Raspy.

“Guess this is it, then, huh?”

He rolled his head so he was facing out of the window, looking straight into the abyss.

God, he fucking hated space.

At least he wouldn’t have to look at it much longer.

“I can stay. If you want,” Nebula said beside him.

Tony imagined it – her sitting silently in the next chair over as his skin turned blue like hers and he wheezed his last. A pitiful way to go. He didn’t want her to watch that.

“Nah,” he said hoarsely. “Think we’ve had enough of each other’s company.”

Nebula made a small sound that might have been a laugh. Just a breath really. Her hand rested lightly on his shoulder, comforting in a way he hadn’t imagined she could be.

“Go quickly,” she said softly, and then her hand was sliding away and she was leaving him alone for the last time.

It didn’t take long after that for the fuzziness to creep in – starting with a tingling in the tips of his fingers and a buzzing in his lips – and it didn’t take long after _that_ for it to get harder to take a breath and harder to concentrate. But as his mind began to falter, one thought struck him - one that comforted and anguished in equal measures.

  _I’m glad Peter isn’t here._

And wasn’t that the worst? To be fucking _glad_ that a seventeen year old child was dead? The kid had been afraid, the very atoms of his existence had been ripped apart - too fast to stop it and too slow to be ignorant of it, and Tony was _glad_. It was horrible to watch and must have been unimaginable to experience, and yet…

 _At least_ , Tony thought, _at least it had been quick_. This – starving and suffocating and half-shrivelled with thirst – Tony figured on some level that for all his sins, he deserved this, but to watch Peter go through it too – that would have been a special hell.

So yeah, he was glad. He was…

…what was he glad about?

Oh yeah. Peter. Kid was an endless source of stress, but he was gonna be the best of them all one day. Tony had been surprised at first when he’d declined the offer to join the Avengers - unable to understand why the kid would turn down something he had been so obviously aspiring to - and then, when the surprise had worn off, he’d been oddly proud.

That was Peter, though – full of surprises. And against all likelihood, Tony had begun to find himself full of surprises, too.  Like inviting the kid to the compound to spend time working on upgrades in the labs, and how quickly that had turned into a regular thing. Like how he worried about the kid’s wellbeing enough to have alerts pinged to F.R.I.D.A.Y when he got in over his head.

Like how suddenly, having a kid didn’t seem like such a scary, out-there thought.

And Tony hadn’t told Peter yet, but he was going to ask him to be groomsman when he married Pepper.

Pepper…

God he couldn’t wait to see her walking down that aisle. To call her Mrs Stark, the way it was always… supposed… to be.

He felt his chin begin to drop, and jolted up with a sharp breath that weighed heavy on his chest. He didn’t want to fall asleep. It seemed important that he didn’t, but he found he couldn’t remember why.

Tony frowned, trying to comb through thoughts that were suddenly as unreachable as the stars outside.

Except… and Tony had to blink against the fuzziness, against the blackness creeping in from the outer edges of his vision to be sure he was seeing what he thought he was seeing.

Because it wasn’t just stars out there on the other side of the cockpit window.

Because there was a woman with a glowing mohawk and eyes like novae floating in that vacuum too.

In a move which defied all physics, she was suddenly standing on the same side of the glass as he was. The mohawk stopped glowing and dropped down into dark blonde hair that fanned around her face. Her eyes dimmed.

“Tony Stark?” she said, stepping forward.

He blinked again, unable to do anything else.

“My name is Carol Danvers. I need you to come with me.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry? 
> 
> Also, this is a bit different to my usual style, so I'd be really happy to know what you all think! Not that I'm ever not, of course. Comments make the world go round :)


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